17 Miles on the Kennebec

I hope you like river pictures - here are a bunch! Susie and I went on a beautiful river run in our kayaks. We started in Waterville and went down to Augusta. It was part of a Kennebec River festival. Very nice - they had a bus to take people back so we only needed one car. (It really was 17 miles!)

We're off.
We were amazingly lucky with the weather. It rained every day except this one. It wasn't this smooth all the way, but isn't this beautiful?
Catching up with a few more kayaks around the half-way point in Sydney.
Here we're coming up to an island - lunchtime!
These things in the water are from when they used to have log drives. These helped channel the logs somehow. Maybe they had people standing there poking them along? Sounds dangerous.
Here's Augusta in the distance. It was funny to come into a city. Most of the trip was really woodsy with just a few signs of civilization - some wires and railroad tracks. We saw herons, ospreys, an eagle and a bunch of big fish jumping.
Starting to see the landing place on the left. We landed at a fort. Someone shot off a canon while we were still in the water - scary noise!
Susie made it - still going strong!
Waiting for the bus.
This person was paddling on a surfboard. She lasted about 2 minutes, then fell in.
What a fun day. I hope we can do some other stretches of the river later in the summer.

Puzzled!

We got bitten by a puzzle bug the last couple of weekends. Nathan got us started and we finally finished it. (with a few slight distractions) Phew.. finally done! It was a tough one - so many tiny pictures.

Once it got together it didn't want to come apart.

Annual Picnic

We lucked out and got a beautiful day for our staff picnic today. This park is about 10 minutes from the office. It's a nice spot, overlooking the bay. Here are lots of pictures.

Olivia wasn't sure if she wanted to get out of the car. (She looks like Kilroy.)

Mmm - lots of goodies.

Glamorous Kristen

Happy customers

The balloon game - we had some disagreements about the rules but it was fun anyway.

Secret strategies

Whose tower could stand by itself?

I don't think any of them did. The wind wasn't helping. Anyway the balloons were a big hit.

Finn had a great time.

Elaine won the rubber band game. Max (Paul's dog) is in the background taking a little snooze. He looked like he was having a good time too. Lots of fun - maybe we should do this more often??